Tag Archives: new faculty

For many clinicians, the path of medicine is a comfortable one—well-worn, made by many feet before your own. From college to residency and beyond, the courses to take, exams to pass, and applications to fill out have been laid out for us in a nice, orderly path. There is some room for brief excursions off the path, but the route to our prescribed life of clinic medicine, hospital medicine, specialty care like sports med, OB, or geriatrics, or some combination thereof is a well-marked trail with lighted signs to guide us all the way.

Until the day you decide to teach. I recall talking to our program director on the first day I had administrative time and asked, “What should I do?” His response: “I don’t care.”

Approximately 60 seconds into the jubilation over my acceptance to the prestigious Harvard Macy Institute Course for Educators in the Health Professions, I came to the stark realization that I would now need to develop a scholarly project at my own institution. Though somewhat daunting as a junior faculty member at a very young medical school, this presented an exciting opportunity to gain more knowledge and experience in medical education.

New faculty members are bombarded with a plethora of new duties. Clinical and teaching work tends to take precedence because of their urgency, while scholarship and professional development is at risk of neglect until those tasks becomes urgent as well. So how does a faculty member stay on top of all of these tasks?

Many faculty make weekly to-do lists and day to day lists in order to stay up to date on current projects. I have found that using a structured to-do list is very helpful in getting more done. The list helps me navigate the academic workload and maintain a sense of purpose and accomplishment.

Another benefit to using to-do lists is that it increases my productivity. Psychology studies show that by writing down what you have to do, you unburden the brain from worrying about what you need do to and can actually accomplish more (The Zeigarnik effect).